@riverhead thousands of us use steemit.chat every day which is proof we do think this service provides a huge value to the community. We have paid for that over the last year with hundreds of thousands of dollars of witness rewards to you as a top 20 witness most of this time. We understand you would like a break. We would like to continue using the chat as long as it is possible until @followbtcnews takes over.

Will you please remove the message we see below and put https://steemit.chat/ back up until @followbtcnews is ready because this will give us a chance to thank you for your service here?

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Fired or Quit?

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I am confused why it says fired on steemit.chat when what I see appears to be voluntarily stepping down? Here is what I observe.

First, @riverhead slips out of the top 20 witness rankings which costs over $600 a day in rewards.

Two days later, @riverhead posts the following message at https://steemit.com/chat/@riverhead/steemit-chat-migrating-to-new-management saying "Steemit.chat Migrating to New Management"

In a reply to a comment, @riverhead explains further!

According to what I can see, @riverhead gave up the top 20 witness position which leaves me confused as to the language indicating a firing? First, quotes from the message on steemit.chat.

Yesterday I was sending messages on https://steemit.chat/ which left me confused when I read a post by @allasyummyfood saying it was offline. I then observed the error message that I put to begin this with. Here are the key lines.

If you are reading this then @riverhead, and by extension steemit.chat, has been fired.

As many know witness positions are highly coveted as pay at current prices is around $200,000 - $500,000+ per year versus around $50k - $90k for the 21st position and dropping sharply after that. There is a HUGE difference between the top 20 and backup witnesses. As @klye mentioned the other day, "These are the rockstars of witnesses".

From what I can see, it appears @riverhead wanted to take a break from Steem and was getting burnt out managing steemit.chat along with the constant need to keep getting more witness votes to stay in the top 20.

Rank 21 Witness = Fired?

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The top 20 witnesses get about 260 Steem power a day by producing a block and getting a reward every 63 seconds while the remaining 21 take turns getting the backup reward of 0.957 Steem power up to 60 times a day at rank 21 and down to once a day at around rank 100. This means today every witness in the top 20 earns over $1,000 worth of Steem as long as the votes and the servers stay online. I get how much it sucks to take the drop after making my way into the top 20 witnesses in October 2017 only to then lose 20% of my votes within a week and today being grateful to be at rank 25 or so.

@riverhead appears to be defining as "fired" is getting the same witness rewards I do today which is more than most witnesses receive at around 50 Steem power a day worth about $200 a day today. Yes it is painful to be making 260 Steem power a day and then to drop back down to 21 then to almost 30 after losing votes. The question is do we keep contributing when it gets painful or do we quit?

What hurts us the most is to see all that we have given as a blockchain and feel like it is not enough to keep steemit.chat up through the transition? We have given hundreds of thousands and maybe even millions of dollars worth of Steem for your service with steemit.chat combined with $200 more a day still! You have been taking the time to cash out $1,000 a day on Bittrex. You have almost $3 million dollars worth of Steem power today. Is this enough to merit a week or two more of hosting steemit.chat?

@riverhead we hope this is an opportunity to make a warm goodbye from steemit.chat and connect with all the people that appreciate steemit.chat by putting it back online.

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So far we just have confusion about "being fired" and suggestions that the witness system we have today at https://steemit.com/~witnesses is not good enough. Believe me I have thought that many times myself and I can say today that while it leaves room for improvement, it is better than any other top cryptocurrency offers!

To add to the confusion, @riverhead is not voting himself as a witness. Does that mean you fired yourself too?

Before making the post about quitting, @riverhead appears to have lost a big vote by first unvoting @xeldal who then unvoted back just before @riverhead made the post about quitting.

Then following the post about turning over management of steemit.chat, a few more big voters like @donkeypong and @ats-david removed witness votes along with @pharesim this morning leaving @riverhead in good/bad company.

Let's Stay Together?

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The challenges we face are our true tests of faith. When life gets challenging for us, we have the opportunity to change and grow. We hope this is a chance to grow together @riverhead after all you have given already. That said, we understand if a break is needed.

We would like to end this stage of our journey together and make the transition into something new with a chance to connect with you and make either proper goodbyes or figure out ways to stay in touch. The error message we are receiving is blocking us from doing this and creating confusion as well as perhaps some panic as many of us have shared confidentially in steemit.chat and are not sure how to stay in touch with some people without it.

One more time ...

@riverhead will you please put steemit.chat online again until @followbtcnews takes over because we would all appreciate it?

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Love,
Jerry Banfield